Fidesz took over the Hungarian media market in under a few years

Since returning to government in 2010, Fidesz has started building or destroying in the Hungarian media in a way never before seen. From television and radio to the printed and online press, party influence continues to grow. In an interactive timeline we show the chronology of the spread of Fidesz media from the slow dismantling of Lajos Simicska to the founding of Andy Vajna’s media kingdom. This process is likely to continue. In support of the changes to the media market taking place over the last six years, the governing party systematically claims this is necessary to counterbalance the left-wing, liberal media. Given that state intervention in the media market has been more frequent, we listed all the events that helped bring about a Fidesz media empire.

The timeline (appearing at the end of the article) shows the incremental steps taken by Fidesz with the various media outlets from public media to Origo, including the purchase of the countryside papers. By clicking on the text (of the original article-tran) you can read the relevant article of ours.

The timeline is also worth looking over because one sees just how central a role Lajos Simicska and Zsolt Nyerges played in bringing commercial media outlets under Fidesz control. Simicska with Class FM, Nyerges with TV2 received huge money from state advertising, while in the background advances were made on all the existing media fronts.

The key date was “G-day” when Lajos Simicska fell out with Viktor Orbán to such an extent that his media influence long supported by the party drastically decreased within months. The falling out drew a new fault line between the “Orbánist” and “non-Orbánist” media, with serious changes starting to take place in public media beginning with changes to the former. New television channels were created and manually controlled propaganda news-reels were started, which later resulted in the complete destruction of MR2 Petőfi.

Meanwhile Fidesz entered the print newspaper market. Under the leadership of (former Magyar Nemzet editor-in-chief-tran.) Gábor Liszkay (who is close to Orbán), print daily Napi Gazdaság was turned into an openly pro-government Magyar Idők, Metropol was taken out from under Simicska, and the free government tabloid Lokál was launched with the cooperation of Árpád Habony, while the traditional right-wing Magyar Nemzet (which remained Simicska’s) adopted a tone that was more and more anti-government. Of course, this was not without its reasons as in the meantime they started driving Simicska out of the advertising market. One of the country’s largest news portals, Origo, came under the influence of Fidesz despite conspicuous claims to the contrary on the part of the government and Telekom. New Wave Media bought it and received more than HUF 600 million (USD 2.2 million) in support via vs.hu from the Pallas foundation set up by central bank governor György Matolcsy. Meanwhile Ripost, 888 and Faktor were launched by companies linked to Fidesz and Árpád Habony.

Fidesz took the final big step with Andy Vajna. The national film commissioner, casino mogul and doughnut magnate bought not only TV2 but later created an entire portfolio (of media products), so that next to public television there are cooking, sport, film and other thematic channels to make room for themselves on the television market.

Even more movement is expected in the future since Fidesz allegedly plans to publish its own tabloid (this will probably be the printed version of Ripost). On November 20th Class FM stopped broadcasting, Andy Vajna’s radio empire expands, and the media portfolio of Gábor Széles (who is close to Orbán) from (pro-government print daily) Magyar Hírlap to (pro-government radio) Echo TV is being transferred to the state. By the end of 2016 the Hungarian radio market has reached the point where only state radio stations are licensed to broadcast nationally.